Entertainment and design company Imaginary Forces (IF) was recently called upon by Walt Disney Pictures to create a teaser for its upcoming feature, NATIONAL TREASURE: BOOK OF SECRETS. The teaser breaks today (May 25, 2007) with the premiere of PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: AT WORLD'S END.

In the NATIONAL TREASURE sequel, treasure hunter Benjamin Franklin Gates (Nicolas Cage) looks to discover the truth behind the assassination of Abraham Lincoln by uncovering the 18 missing pages from assassin John Wilkes Booth's diary, and embarks on an adventure with many surprising twists.

The 1:40-minute teaser, art-directed by Sean Koriakin of Imaginary Forces, opens on a CG 19th century globe. The viewer is taken into the globe where script type -- from the 18 missing pages of Booth's diary -- is revealed. Gates (Cage) provides the voiceover, telling the story as though we are seeing the adventure in his head. Through his deductive thought process, we follow the type where highlighted clues and symbols lead to animated images of President Lincoln and his assassination, and to various landmarks in Paris, London and the U.S. where this global journey takes Gates and his team.

"What's nice about this teaser is that it stays true to the storyboards we pitched to the client," said Koriakin. "Everything from the color to script type to the globe to stylistic elements; we were able to execute our concept all the way through to the end. We didn't have much film footage to work with initially so we used as much animation and motion graphics as possible to tell the story -- to connect its action, extensive historical references and global perspective."

Within the body of the teaser are Masonic symbols, hidden and embedded by IF into the landmarks. The symbols also turn into the cast run at the end of the film. Fire and smoke elements were shot by the IF team, which were included in the animated portion when Booth's pages were incinerated, as well as all of the graphic cards in the teaser.

The animations were created in Autodesk Maya and Adobe After Effects, and composited in Autodesk Inferno. All of the type and symbols were designed and animated in Maxon Cinema 4D. The entire teaser, including film footage, was edited in Avid.

Koriakin concluded, "I never dreamt that I'd have to model a 3D Abraham Lincoln head!"

IMAGINARY FORCES (www.imaginaryforces.com) is an entertainment and design company based in Hollywood and New York. Its award-winning work spans the diverse industries of feature film production, entertainment marketing and promotion, corporate branding, architecture, advertising and interactive media. IF's recent work includes identity packages for Lifetime, USA Network, Animal Planet and MTV, as well as effective and compelling broadcast advertising for Nike, Toyota, Pontiac, Smirnoff and Lexus. In entertainment and media marketing, IF created campaigns for such films as NATIONAL TREASURE 2, TRANSFORMERS, THE CHRONICLES OF NARNIA, THE STEPFORD WIVES, SIGNS and both MEN IN BLACK films. The company also designed and produced main title sequences for THE NUMBER 23, CHARLOTTE'S WEB, THE MESSENGERS, RAY, SPIDER-MAN and SEVEN, and produced the highly successful BLADE trilogy.

Never mind the play, Mrs. Lincoln. How would you feel about a movie sequel?

The assassination of Abraham Lincoln and a legendary fortune in Confederate gold that could have changed the outcome of the Civil War are at the center of the upcoming National Treasure: Book of Secrets.

The film, now shooting scenes in Paris, follows the hit 2004 adventure starring Nicolas Cage as historian Benjamin Franklin Gates. In the first movie, Gates followed hidden messages in the Declaration of Independence to a treasure concealed by the Founding Fathers.

Real history is once again Cage's sidekick in unraveling a fictional legend, with missing pages from assassin John Wilkes Booth's journal and the connection between Mount Rushmore, the Statue of Liberty and the Eiffel Tower serving as key plot points in the sequel.

"When we made the first movie, most people told us it would suck because people don't care about history," director Jon Turteltaub says.

The Da Vinci Code and the box-office success of the first National Treasure showed that outrageous fiction spiced with real history could generate real-life box-office riches. "We put in as many footnotes to history as possible for our puzzles," Turteltaub says.

Lady Liberty has a pivotal role in Book of Secretsfemme fatale with a hidden-in-plain-sight secret. In addition, Cage's character finds inspiration at the Lincoln Memorial, evidence in the antique wooden desk of the Oval Office, and implications in Buckingham Palace involving long-gone British monarchs.

"I think this film is more interesting because of the international aspects of it," Cage says. He adds that it plays with connections between Lincoln, the Civil War and other countries at the time.

His character was considered a conspiracy nut in the original, but in the second film, Cage says he "begins as a more accepted historian."

"He's an archaeologist, a scholar, a historian, an extreme square and a sometimes criminal. In this second movie, I don't steal the Declaration of Independence, but I kidnap the president of the United States, which is amusing in itself."

The president, played by Bruce Greenwood, has access to the eponymous (and definitely non-historical) Book of Secrets, which producer Jerry Bruckheimer says "has all the interesting facts that we know nothing about, like Area 51 and the Kennedy assassination and other conspiracies."

"The movie is conceived basically for (Gates) to use his wits and intelligence, because he has not had all the physical training of other action-movie characters," says Bruckheimer, who produced the Pirates of the Caribbean movies.

New to the cast is Helen Mirren, who plays Cage's mother, a specialist in Native American history and language, who has been estranged from his father (a returning Jon Voight) for decades.

"She eschews treasure hunting because she has seen all the damage it has done to her family," Turteltaub says. "That's until she goes along for the ride."

Comment

And to read more about the missing pages from the journal of John Wilkes Booth from a historical perspective I recommend the book, "Manhunt: The 12-Day Chase For Lincoln's Killer" by James L. Swanson. It's a fascinating and fun (considering the subject matter) read. A film based on the book is in development with Harrison Ford attached to star as one of the lead manhunters.
Read more on it here:http://www.micechat.com/forums/showt...n+ford+swanson